


so let me get this straight

by toxica939



Series: who we were when [2]
Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Alternate Universe - Teenagers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 12:39:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15663402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toxica939/pseuds/toxica939
Summary: It gets out at school when Finn Barton's older brother takes a photo of them kissing in the corner of a gay pub in town and sends it to everyone Aaron has ever met.





	so let me get this straight

It gets out at school when Finn Barton's older brother takes a photo of them kissing in the corner of a gay pub in town and sends it to everyone Aaron has ever met.

Robert has only met Finn Barton's brother once, when he stepped in front of a punch meant for Aaron, after the bathroom wank and dumping fiasco. He assumes the photo is the bloke's idea of vigilante justice or something, as through Robert's broken nose wasn't suffering enough.

The worst part is, that Aaron doesn't care who knows they're shagging, and Robert, who definitely does, hadn't even wanted to go there in the first place; won round by the promise of cheap beer and Aaron's wandering hands. He'd said it was a bad idea before they'd even got on the bus.

He wishes there was more satisfaction in always being right, sometimes.

:::

“So is it true then?” Katie's got her arms folded, mouth a grim line.

It's easy to do his best bored face, because this is boring.

He looks through her, two floating versions of her head merging with the horizon. There's a couple of lads messing about in the cricket nets across the playing field.

Robert leans back against the sixth form block, brick lumpy and catching on his coat. He wants to shrug but he doesn't.

She rolls her eyes. “You didn't seem very gay the other week.”

“I'm not gay.”

She tuts at him. “Oh sure Robert, we all believe you.”

There's no one else around, she's dragged him back here, like she always does, to make sure Andy can't see them talking.

“What do you care?”

“I don't.”

“So why are we still having this conversation?”

He watches her lips part. He'd thought he loved her, once, before he realised that love, and finally getting one over on the great Andy Sugden weren't actually the same thing. Now he doesn't feel much of anything at all.

He does shrug this time, pushes with his shoulders to stand up straight and stroll away.

She catches his sleeve and he looks down at her hand until it falls away. Her nails are square, white at the tip.

“Is that it then? That's all you've got to say,” her lip curls. “I hope you're happy with yourself, Andy's getting so much shit about this.”

Robert's stomach has been caving in on itself since first period computer science, when some lad whose name Robert had never bothered to learn leant back in his spinney chair to call across the room, _never figured you for a puff, Sugden._ If she thinks ruining Andy's day is going to make him feel bad, she's even stupider than he thought.

He keeps walking.

:::

Dad's stood by the TV, hands on his hips, Andy wringing his hands on the sofa.

His head snaps to the left when he spots Robert, eyes on him, and Robert feels all the air get sucked out of the room. Andy has the grace to look ashamed of himself for telling. Robert should have known, really.

He does know Dad's shouting but it's happening in a vacuum, just his mouth moving and his face turning red. Robert can't hear a word.

Until he can.

“It's that Dingle lad isn't it? Putting these ideas in your head. I told Sarah he was a bad influence years ago, should have stuck to my guns,” Dad's puffed up, still in his wellies.

“Fuck you,” Robert spits. “You don't know anything about it.”

“I know no son of mine's going around with some queer. Not any more.”

It hurts in a vague sort of way, dull like all pain has been since Mum died. It's sort of funny.

“Maybe I'm the queer,” Robert says. “Better hope it's not catching, ay Andy?”

Andy splutters under the sudden attention. “I'm with Katie,” he says. Pathetic.

Robert's laugh is harsh, brittle. “Yeah mate, aren't we all?”

Andy comes at him, like Robert knew he would, and he's lifting his jaw for the punch, like he wants it.

He's not expecting Dad to get there first.

:::

Aaron has kind eyes. The rest of him, not so much. People expect a thug when they look at him, and Aaron's never liked to disappoint. But his eyes are the heart of him. Robert likes that he knows that, even if the look in them now isn't one he's proud of putting there.

“What the fuck? Who's done this to you?”

Robert tries a self-depreciating grin, but it cracks his lip open again, burns bright and coppery.

“You know me,” he says. “Always did fancy myself as the black sheep of the family.”

Aaron's jaw tightens but he doesn't say anything. Just drags Robert into the warmth of his house, the warmth of his arms. Robert sags in relief, strings cut. Maybe he can rest now.

:::

He wakes up too hot, sweating in his clothes on top of Aaron's duvet. Aaron is a hot line against his back, knees tucked up behind Robert's. He's got an arm draped over Robert's waist, hand pushed up under his shirt, curled slack against his belly.

Robert's face has it's own pulse. He remembers Aaron between his knees on the bathroom floor, dabbing at his face with some ancient bathroom cabinet TCP.

_D'you want to talk about it?_

_Not really._

And Aaron letting it go. Letting him hide.

It's dark in Aaron's room, silence from the pub below. Robert closes his eyes, sinks back into Aaron's hold.

He'll be alright in the morning.

:::

Chas forces him to drink a cup of weak tea, plonks a bowl of cornflakes under his nose. She looks like she's desperate to ask, but Aaron's sharp shake of the head, the patented eyebrow raise, keep her quiet.

She cradles a mug between both hands, elbows on the table. “I should call your dad about this,” she says.

Robert doesn't know what his face does, it's still mostly numb, but whatever it is makes hers go blank before she takes another sip of tea. He watches her share a look with Aaron and tries not to feel embarrassed about being here.

It's tiring, being embarrassed all the time. Of his family, of himself. The Sugden brothers, out on that weird farm, did you know their mum died in a fire? Shut up, he'll hear you.

Robert's always heard them. And he's never going to hear the end of this is he?

“I've got to go,” he says, suddenly vibrating with it. Shoves up from the table.

Aaron scrambles after him. “Robert. Robert, wait. Where you going?”

He turns Robert with a hand on his shoulder, the one that doesn't ache. Aaron's eyes are too bright, and he sees too much.

Robert looks away. “I've got school.”

“Like that?”

“It's Hotten Comp, they've seen worse. Your doing, usually.”

Aaron laughs, like he was supposed to. In reality it's been a good couple of years since Aaron last had a scrap. Somewhere around the time he dragged himself kicking and screaming out of the closet. Robert doesn't remember him looking Robert feels right now though. Maybe he wasn't looking hard enough.

“I'm going to miss my bus,” he says, as though he's got a clue what time it is.

Aaron sighs, sharp cheekbones and the slope of his forehead against the morning sky. “You can talk to me you know,” he says.

He sounds like he doesn't think Robert will, and Robert's capable of a lot of things, but upsetting Aaron is one he likes least. He reaches out to cup a hand around the back of Aaron's neck, press a kiss to his temple. “Later, yeah? I really am late.”

It wouldn't even have a been a lie, if he'd gone to school.

:::

Mum died in a barn fire. Dad says it was an accident, and Andy says he can't remember how it started.

Robert remembers.

It's still standing, still charred to black at one end.

There's a fold out chair in one, dry corner. A carrier bag of books beside it, knotted at the top. All of her favourites, the ones Dad put in the charity shop pile to make room for Victoria's ever expanding Goosebumps collection, rescued.

He'd brought Aaron here once, tried to explain that it didn't feel morbid, that it made him feel whole. He doesn't think Aaron really got it, but he'd sat with Robert for an afternoon, flicked through a cloth-bound copy of Great Expectations with moderate interest. Robert had appreciated the company. That, he's sure, Aaron did get.

Robert holes up in his corner for the day, reads the first two hundred pages of Rebecca, and stares into the dark at the other end of the barn. He doesn't talk to her or anything, he's not a nutter. But it settles something off-kilter inside him, being here, like she's still smoothing his hair back into place. It's nice.

When the shadows grow long in the afternoon and his fingers are about as cold as he can stand, Robert returns the book to it's bag, re-ties the knot, and leaves.

He goes back to the pub, for lack of any better options. And on the off chance that Aaron will already be home.

Aaron's sat on one of the picnic tables out the front, boots on the bench seat. He's got a cigarette pinched between his thumb and two of his fingers, tip glowing with each inhale.

He perks up when he spots Robert, which is gratifying, and just what Robert needs right now. It makes him smile, the weight in his stomach bobbing up and down and up again.

“Where have you been?” Aaron asks, sulky, like he's just remembered he's supposed to be annoyed at Robert or something. And then, off Robert's baffled look - “You left all your school stuff here, knobhead, I'm not an idiot.”

He's not. And Robert loves him, so he doesn't lie. “I couldn't face it, everyone talking shit about you, and this,” he points to his face.

“So you went to the barn.”

“So I went to the barn.”

Aaron rubs a hand over his mouth, ashes his fag at the ground. “This isn't going to work if you don't talk to me, you know.”

“I do talk to you.”

“Robert,” Aaron says, like he's exhausted, heel of his hand grinding at his eye socket. “You're gay-”

“I'm not.”

Aaron sighs, eyes rolling. “For god's sake, Robert.”

But Robert shakes his head. No. If it's out, it's out but it's on his terms now. “I'm not. I'm bisexual. I'm bi, and I love you, and anyone who doesn't like it can fuck off.”

It's the first time he's said it out loud but it doesn't feel like the grand announcement he thought it would. It's just words.

Aaron's staring at him, mouth open.

“I mean it, Aaron. I know who I am alright? I just don't think it's anyone else's business.”

“When you say it like that, it sounds like you're ashamed of it.”

And that wont do.

Robert puts a knee on the bench between Aaron's feet, rubs a hand up over the back of his head; crushed velvet over the fragile shape of his skull. Robert loves him like a heartbeat, like the pulse behind his smarting ribs. He draws Aaron close and kisses his smokey mouth, doesn't even pull a face. “Never. Everyone knows you're the best part of me, come on.”

Aaron rolls his lips into his mouth. Robert knows he's doing it to stifle a smile, so he kisses him again, on the prickly line where his mouth should be, keeps kissing, right there, out in the open, until Aaron starts kissing back and Robert's got his hands fisted in the back of his stupid puffa coat.

He sleeps over again, lets Aaron be gentle with him between his dirty sheets and Robert's dirty mouth.

Turns out it's easier to be brave when you have someone else to lick your wounds.

:::

Dad's in his usual spot at the table, soup in the pot.

“I've just come to get some stuff,” Robert says, because he doesn't even look up and that cuts deeper than his fists did.

Dad nods, doesn't say sorry, doesn't look at the mess he's made of Robert. “You've got somewhere to stay?”

Robert thinks of Aaron, idling in the car at the end of the drive, trying to be supportive when what he really wants to do is chuck a brick through Robert's kitchen window.

“My boyfriend's,” Robert says, because he can, because he wants him to know exactly where Robert's been.

He doesn't cower under Dad's dark gaze, not even when it crumples in disgust. Aaron would be proud.

Robert goes up to his room, with his books and his clothes; the teddy bear he's not ready to part with yet and the photo of Mum beside his bed.

He slides down the closed door, buries his face in his knees, and cries.

It doesn't count. No one can see him.

He'll be alright in the morning.

 


End file.
